To say that Lord Rafe was made uncomfortable by his father’s disapproval was something of an understatement. Rafe felt strongly his sire’s displeasure and it saddened him, but he could see no other course open to him.
Rafe reached the door of his father’s apartments and halted, smoothing his hair across his brow and taking a deep breath. It didn’t occur to him that this little ritual might be considered strange in a man in his twenty eighth year. If asked he would have said it was a mark of respect. He would no more have entered battle without first rallying his troops, than enter his father’s presence in the hall without first being sure he was tidy.
The wooden walls of the great hall were hung with tapestries and smoke from the fire filled the air, flavouring every breath. His father sat at the head of a long table, occupying a large, fur covered, chair set at an angle so that the warmth of the flames in the hearth reached him. He was speaking with a small wizened man dressed solely in black.
“Master Rafe!”
“Hello, Stilman.” Rafe smiled at the old servant. “I am come to speak with my father if he is free.”
“I’m always free to see my most troublesome son!” Lord Brogan’s voice wafted across the room from where he was seated behind the heavy table.
“I happen to be your only son, sir.”
“That would explain why ‘tis only you that gives me trouble then.” Lord Brogan turned to Stilman. “That is enough for today; I’ll call you if I need aught else.”
Stilman retired from the room, leaving its remaining occupants in uneasy silence. Rafe shifted his weight awkwardly and pulled on his tunic.
“I take it you are ready to leave?”
“Yes, sir.” Rafe hesitated, fingering the sheathed knife on his belt. “I had hoped to make you understand why I have chosen this path before I left. ‘Tis not my wish to hurt you.”
Lord Brogan regarded his son closely for several moments before heaving a large sigh.
“I do understand, Rafe. I know that you think because I disagree with your present course, I do not comprehend your reason for pursuing it. I know that this is not what you would have chosen for yourself, that it is hard for both you and her.” Lord Brogan came around the table and placed his hand on his son’s broad shoulder.
“One day you will have a son of your own, Rafe, and you will see that ‘tis no easy thing. You hold him in your arms and he is naught but a scrappy little thing. No matter how big he becomes, to you that is how he remains; a tiny bundle that you must protect. ‘Tis hard for me to let you find your own way, but you must do as you think best, Rafe, and I wish you success.”
Rafe grasped his father’s hand tightly in his own.
“Forgive me, Father?”
“For what? Growing to be a man?” Lord Brogan patted his son’s shoulder. “You must be careful, Rafe; even the best laid plans can somehow become tangled.”
-------
The village was big, much bigger than he had expected. He had thought to find a few hovels, but not the self contained village that thrived before him. The huts were set around the base of the hill and were in turn surrounded by well kept fields. Rafe made his way along the track that led through the huts and up the hill, and came to a guard post. The man within made his way towards Rafe’s horse slowly. As he approached, Rafe noticed that his tunic was liberally splashed with his mornings repast. “What is your business here, sir?”
“I am here to visit the fort.” Rafe watched the man look past him at the horse he was leading, and then back at the chain mail Rafe was wearing.
“I am afraid, sir, that you cannot visit the fort.” The man rocked back on his heels and supported himself on his spear, looking up at Rafe with a faint air of apology.
“Lord Valrek sent me with this letter to the fort and to the lady who has charge of Lady Adele.” Rafe held the letter out toward the man. The second the soldier’s eyes lighted on the Valrek seal, and he straightened.
“Your pardon, sir; I was only obeying my orders.”
“Lord Valrek shall know that you have performed your duty well,” soothed Rafe, and with a nod he urged his horse up the track.
The fort was old, set atop the grassy hill, and looked uninviting and cold. Rafe felt a faint qualm as he wondered if it portended in some way the cold inhospitality of its inhabitants. No man, reflected Rafe, however honourable wished his bride to be associated in any way with epithets such as uninviting and cold.
He had always supposed that his betrothal would become more palatable to him as time passed. No one could expect a lad in his twelfth year to greet the idea of a wife with anything but derision. He had assumed that as the years moved on he would feel differently, and he did feel differently, but still just as difficult. His very nature rebelled against being forced into a position he had neither made nor wanted. It was a circumstance that made for a very inauspicious start to an inevitable relationship.
These were hardly cheering thoughts. He slipped from his horse, pausing for a moment to take a deep steadying breath, before pulling the bell cord with more vigour than was necessary.
The peal sounded loudly, echoing down the hill, clear and pure on the cold air. Rafe waited, his complete stillness hiding a certain impatient restlessness that, though very much a part of his character, he always sought to control. It seemed to him that he stood there an eternity, and in truth his wait was rather lengthy. Finally he heard the sound of the bolts being drawn back, and the heavy oak door opened a little.
“Yes?”
Rafe found himself subjected to a hard and searching glare that was so unexpectedly ferocious, he was for a moment bereft of speech. The penetrating, dark eyed stare roamed over him swiftly. For the first time in his life Rafe felt that the owner for those brilliant orbs was neither pleased nor impressed by what she saw.
“Kindly state your business or be gone, young man.”
The voice was sharply bracing and Rafe suddenly rediscovered his tongue.
“I come from Valrek with a letter from Lord Rafe.”
Those bright little eyes glared at him for an unnerving moment longer, and then the door was opened wider.
“Well? Get in with you; do you think I have naught else to do but stand here and hold this door?”
Rafe ducked his head and passed through into the courtyard to find himself confronted by an elderly woman. Her face was heavily wrinkled, yet made lively by her curious, questing eyes.
She was, Rafe reflected, the tiniest woman he had ever beheld. The top of her head hardly reached his chest, but whatever she lacked in stature she more than made up for in spirit.
She led him across the courtyard toward a stone building. The fort was, as he already knew, a relic from the roman invasion. Though not particularly big, its placement on top of the hill made it hard to attack.
The woman opened another large oak door and Rafe entered into a hall. The walls were covered in tapestries, and there were woven rugs on the uneven flagged floor. The old woman pushed past him, muttering under her breath, and gestured that he should follow her through an arch and into the small room beyond.
It was furnished with a table, a few rough chairs covered in soft furs, and had a large fire roaring to one side of the room. In one corner Rafe could see some sort of needle work that had been hastily discarded on one of the fur covered chairs. Despite the warmth emanating from the fire, the stone walls made the room cold.
“My name is Mistress Ardith, I am in charge of the Lady Adele.”
Mistress Ardith had settled herself into one of the large chairs, seeming quite unconcerned that her feet were no longer able to touch the floor.
“You have, I think, a letter for me?” she asked.
Rafe held the missive out to her and waited for some time to be invited to take a chair. It became obvious that no such offer was going to be made by the lady so deeply engrossed in the letter that he himself had written, and so he sat down without being invited or having asked.
Mistress
Ardith read the letter through twice before again directing her attention upon Rafe. She seemed surprised at not finding him standing before her still, and frowned as she saw he had made himself comfortable near the fire.
“Your master writes that he has sent,” she paused, taking up the letter again and reading aloud an excerpt. “ ‘The man whom I most trust’.”
She looked at him severely over the top of the letter and he fancied that Lord Valrek had fallen far in her estimation.
“Lord Valrek tells me in this missive that I am to release Lady Adele to your,” again she consulted the letter, “ to your ‘most trustworthy custody’.”
She regarded him again as though she could not quite reconcile the words in the letter to the man standing before her.
“The letter makes no mention of a travelling companion for Lady Adele.”
“I believe Lord Rafe considered that you would provide a young lady.”
Mistress Ardith nodded her assent and then appeared to lapse into thoughtful reverie. She was suffering a great many misgivings. It was not her place to question her employer, but she found herself disliking the slights that she perceived Lord Rafe to be offering Adele. His failure to collect his bride himself could be seen as nothing less than a slight, and the young man he had sent in his stead… Mistress Ardith resolutely bridled her thoughts, she was thinking above her station.
Still something had to be said, if only to assure that this young man treated Adele as befitted a Lady of Berron, and did not stint on the things necessary for her comfort. Mistress Ardith knew that Adele would not call him to account for not giving her the respect and care that was appropriate to her station.
“Lady Adele was placed in my care when she was but two years of age, she has spent her life confined within the walls of this place and has been raised to be Lord Rafe’s wife. In short, you cannot expect her to undertake any sort of hardship, she is far too delicate for that.”
Mistress Ardith thought she detected a faintly disparaging gleam in Rafe’s eyes but could not be sure.
“She must be well taken care of. There are many things she has no experience of and which might upset her if you are not quick to shield her from them.”
“You may depend upon me.”
The look of extreme dubiety that greeted this statement left Rafe in no doubt as to the thoughts running through Mistress Ardith’s head. His found he had to repress an amused smile, he rather liked the stern old lady.
“There is yet one thing. You will be the first man that Lady Adele has seen these sixteen years, she may be a little… surprised.”
The silence that greeted this statement was, Mistress Ardith realised with astonishment, an angry one.
“What?”
Rafe’s voice was not loud, but Mistress Ardith had the strangest feeling that it had taken a great deal of self control to keep it at so reasonable a level.
“Lady Adele has been kept in seclusion waiting for her husband,” returned Mistress Ardith, surprised by a strange need to explain herself.
“In seclusion? What possible use is that?”
“It was decided that it would be best,” answered Mistress Ardith, taken aback by such fervour. “Her whereabouts had to remain a secret, and it was possible that Lady Adele might form some attachment. Such a circumstance could only bring her unnecessary pain when an attachment of that sort was impossible to act upon, she being promised already to another.”
“My own sister was betrothed in her fourth year, but we found no need to secure her in a tower that she might not have her heart broken by a man who she was unable to marry,” stated Rafe shortly. “It was considered that the knowledge that she was betrothed would keep her safe from such disappointment. Of what use do you suppose Lady Adele will be to her people, people who have waited sixteen years for her return?”
“Lady Adele...”
“She will be of no use to anyone, least of all to her husband,” interrupted Rafe. “Although I dare say her needle work is above reproach!”
Mistress Ardith folded her arms across her chest, smote by the unaccountable feeling of being somehow wrong.
“What is done, is done and was done for the best.” She stood abruptly, indicating that he was to follow her. “Now I will take you to your chamber. It is too late for Lady Adele to be travelling tonight.” She seemed to struggle within herself. “I shall have some food sent to you.”
Mistress Ardith left Rafe at the door of the chamber where he was to pass the night. As she withdrew he noticed, with a slight feeling of self reproach, that her eyes were clouded with worry.
Chapter Three